The NCAA Tournament is live online and the North Carolina Tar Heels are playing against Providence on Friday and the stream comes from the March Madness website along with a radio stream from Westwood One starting up at 7:20 pm ET and UNC will be playing against the Friars at the AT&T Center in San Antonio.
The Tar Heels have been a very solid team this season after a rough start to the year and losses to Belmont, UAB and Texans and they really turned things on in the second half of the schedule, winning 12 straight games in the ACC and that propelled them to a top four finish with Duke, Syracuse and Virginia, who ended up wining the ACC tournament and the regular season title for the first time in years. The Tar Heels are led by James Michael McAdoo and forward Marcus Paige and they will have to battle with Friars guard Bryce Cotton, who has been very impressive in the Big East this season.
The Tar Heels are coming off of a loss in the ACC tournament to the Pitt Panthers and Paige led the team with 27 points, while McAdoo was tops with seven rebounds. The team is hoping to give Roy Williams a nice final four run and one team from the ACC is already down in Duke after they lost to Mercer and that means UNC will not be taking anything for granted against Providence. The team was ranked in the top 50 in scoring with over 75 points per game and the team ranked ninth in the nation in rebounds with nearly 40 per contest. The team was in the top 25 in assists per game and they were in the top 75 in the nation with a 46 percent field goal rate from the floor.
The team went a stretch from the end of January to the beginning of March without losing a game and in that time they defeated number five Duke and Pitt when they were ranked at 25 before finally falling to Duke and that came on the road at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Tar Heels opened up 1-4 in the ACC and ended up 13-5 on the season and now they have a chance to move along in the tournament for the chance to play Iowa State or NCCU in the East bracket and UNC comes in as the number six seed. The east is a tough bracket and teams like Villanova and Michigan State will be tough to get past.
Cotton will be the top man for the Friars and he comes in leading the team with over 20 points per game and he has been one of the leaders in playing time this season, averaging nearly 40 minutes per game. According to the AP he has played the full amount in all but three of the last 18 games and he leads the nation in that stat of minutes played per game. The North Carolina Tar Heels have had plenty of tournament success and now they will try and avoid the same fate as Duke.
Check here for the North Carolina and Providence live coverage from the NCAA Tournament.